Thursday, April 28, 2016

Hard and not so hard political choices

Several states have recently passed laws regarding
civil rights for LGBT persons. These laws tend to restrict individual rights.
They were apparently enacted as a backlash against the Supreme Court decision
that legalized same sex marriage. One state that has passed such a law is North
Carolina, where I lived prior to moving to Hawaii. North Carolina's law prohibits
North Carolina localities from passing laws to protect the rights of LGBT
persons and stipulates that individuals use the public restroom provided for
persons of the gender listed on the individual's birth certificate.

By nature, I intend toward libertarianism. That is,
I think that laws should be a last resort; people should enjoy maximum freedom.
However, laws should establish boundaries that equitably limit the individual exercise
of freedom.

For example, individuals should not have the right
to discriminate against other persons based on religion, sex, political
affiliation, ethnicity, race, or gender orientation. Permitting same sex
marriage in no way devalues or diminishes heterosexual marriage. Arguably, just
the opposite is true: legalizing same sex marriage increases respect for intact
families, regardless of the composition of those families. Prohibiting
municipalities from banning discrimination against LGBT persons harms LGBT individuals
and harms the wider community by diminishing the state's expectation that its
citizens will respect the dignity and worth of all persons. In other words, North
Carolina's law limits freedom and sanctions rather than ends immoral
discrimination.

North Carolina's law is also unenforceable. Who
will check the genitals of all persons wishing to a use public restroom?
Furthermore, will the state require everyone to carry her/his birth certificate
to prove she/he is using the proper restroom? One North Carolina sheriff opposes
the law as unenforceable (he refuses to station his deputies outside of public
restrooms) and, because the law is so patently unenforceable, as having the
unintended consequence of tacitly promoting disrespect for law and order.

If I still resided in North Carolina, I would advocate
replacing gender specific restrooms with facilities designed to accommodate
everyone. One option is individual restrooms. Another option is to have individual
stalls (some might have only a urinal) and a common wash area. Single parents
with a young child of the opposite sex can face difficult decisions when the
child needs to use a public toilet. These options avoid these problems.

The fact is that the hullabaloo about restrooms masks
prejudice against LGBT persons that the law allows to become immoral discrimination.
I heard similar bogus arguments against allowing LGBT persons to serve in the
military. When finally forced to integrate, the military had no significant
problems. People simply need to respect one another as God's creation,
regardless of gender or sexual orientation.

Mutual respect is not a panacea for all political
conflict. Hard choices do exist. For example, abortion opponents generally believe
that life begins at conception and abortion is therefore murder. Proponents of
abortion rights disagree that life begins at conception. Both sides agree that
murder is wrong. Unfortunately, answers to the question of when life begins remain
elusive. Abortion is therefore a political question that forces hard choices.
How can we respect individual choices and beliefs while also not legalizing
murder?

Constructive political engagement, like any
negotiation process, often will begin with easy questions (e.g., LGBT rights)
and then proceed to harder questions. Sometimes, the best feasible outcome is
to agree to disagree, accepting that living in a democracy means that one will
not always have one's opinions prevail.

Constructive political engagement, like any
negotiation process, can sometimes advance by parsing large issues into smaller
issues. For example, treating abortion as a complex problem rather than a
bifurcated choice between murder and respect for life can move a conversation forward
while reducing the number of abortions, a goal about which most people agree. Laws
against abortion have proven ineffectual and harmful. Women who seek abortions
obtain them from unlicensed practitioners in potentially dangerous ways. Furthermore,
the number of women who seek abortions declines as the number of unplanned
pregnancies declines. Improving access to birth control therefore is an
effective approach to reducing the frequency of abortion. Also, convenient and
affordable alternatives to abortion, such as the morning after pill, can
further reduce the number of women seeking abortions.

In sum, politics need not degrade into
irreconcilable polarization. Most people – that is, almost everybody except sociopaths
– have good hearts, solid civic values, and a positive vision of communal life.
Together, we can uphold the rights of all through mutual respect while constructively
promoting the common good in public discourse and government.